


家 (home)

by viscarias



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:01:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27756553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscarias/pseuds/viscarias
Summary: sometimes a family is just two dudes, a little orange demon, and lulu.housemates AU: Luobo makes the worst first impression by ruining Taehyun's shoes, Yixing is a bad housemate, and somehow everything fits together and they make a house into a home.
Relationships: Zhang Yixing | Lay/Kim Taehyun | Trix
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23
Collections: Round 1 of Tales of the Lotus Fest





	家 (home)

**Author's Note:**

> kind of veered off from the prompt a little, but i hope i captured the essence of it. i'm really happy that yixing has someone who really does support him wholeheartedly by his side... the world is scary, but you can build a home anywhere, with the right people. 
> 
> not so much romance as much as the beginnings of something special i think, i didn't want to bite off more than i can chew (but i do want to work on a longer sequel!) anyway, enjoy

This is the last straw. 

Taehyun likes to think that he’s been a pretty understanding housemate—Yixing’s night-owl tendencies don’t bother him as much as they used to, the late night lessons have permanently pushed his body clock back a few hours, and he doesn’t say anything about the sound of Yixing grinding his teeth in his sleep. But this is different. 

It’s been a long day. He’s just had the worst train trip back from Chengdu (he couldn’t find his seat and the train staff didn’t speak English or Korean, and when he finally did, the kid sitting behind him kept kicking his chair). All he wants is to take a hot shower and sleep until the world ends but instead

instead he opens the door to find a tiny orange kitten chewing on the laces of his favourite sneakers. A kitten. Why is there a kitten in the house and why is it chewing on his shoes. 

Nevermind that, it’s two a.m., he’ll deal with this in the morning (and maybe finally give Yixing a piece of his mind about leaving dirty dishes in the sink overnight). Taehyun steps gingerly over the monstrous little demon gnawing on his formerly pristine white shoes and closes the door behind him. Yixing is probably asleep by now, he wouldn’t be usually, but he has an early morning schedule tomorrow, so Taehyun tries to stay as quiet as possible as he sets his backpack down on the table and grabs his mug from above the sink. 

(He doesn’t know when Yixing and him came to the agreement that he would use the yellow mug and Yixing would use the purple one, but that’s just how it is now.)

‘Luobo… where are you, it’s time to sleep,’ Yixing’s soft, familiar voice breaks the silence. Taehyun looks up from his water to see Yixing rubbing at sleep-heavy eyes while walking out of his room, looking around the floor for something. Taehyun clears his throat to announce his presence. 

‘Oh, you’re back already!’ Yixing’s eyes turn into happy crescent moons as he grins at Taehyun, ‘Have you seen a little orange cat, he’s about this big, I can’t find him anywhere…’

The annoyance that was sitting in Taehyun’s stomach gives way to something a little fond when his eyes meet Yixing’s and he just gestures at the little orange lump that has now curled up to sleep in front of the door, with the shoelace still in its mouth. 

‘Why are you still up?’ Looking at the curve of Yixing’s back through the thin white fabric of his sleep shirt, Taehyun can’t help but worry that Yixing has been skipping meals and pulling all-nighters while he wasn’t around. 

Not like it’s any of his business. Yixing is his boss. 

And his housemate, Taehyun tacks on, stifling a smile as he remembers how Yixing all but forced Taehyun to take the key to his apartment after learning that he had been living out of a hotel for the first two weeks after flying to China. It was a pretty nice hotel too—Yixing’s manager had made sure to get one with staff that spoke Korean, and Taehyun wasn’t about to complain about a place he wasn’t even paying for. 

But Yixing had been horrified that his teacher hadn’t gotten a ‘proper place to stay’ and insisted on him moving in, at least until Taehyun found other housing arrangements. Cohabiting turned out to be pretty convenient, for all the odd hours Yixing managed to find time for lessons, and somehow, without saying anything, the two of them ended up in an understanding that Taehyun wasn’t going to be moving out any time soon. 

The sound of Yixing murmuring something in Chinese to the orange kitten now cradled in his arms catches Taehyun’s attention again and he’s reminded of his earlier confusion at seeing the little thing treating his sneaker as a chew toy. 

‘Since when did you get a cat?’ Yixing looks up at him, left hand still absent-mindedly smoothing the fur sticking up at the top of the kitten’s head. 

‘I brought him home…’ Yixing trails off into a yawn. 

He looks tired, Taehyun thinks. He decides not to press any further.

‘Don’t sleep too late, remember your shoot tomorrow morning,’ He picks up his backpack and starts walking to his room, the soreness in his arms already not boding well for the pain he’s going to feel tomorrow when he wakes up. 

‘You know my schedule even better than I do,’ Yixing gets up from his position on the floor and makes to move back to his room, ‘Good night.’

Taehyun doesn’t respond, closing the door to his room. He thinks,

Of course I do. How else am I supposed to make sure you don’t forget to feed yourself or ‘accidentally’ not sleep for days at a time? 

-

The next day, Taehyun wakes up to an empty apartment and a note on the table in Yixing’s neat script, telling him to expect him home for dinner and that he wants to have a lesson at night after that. He also realises that Luobo, the little orange creature from yesterday, isn’t the only new addition to their household—when he steps into the living room after breakfast he finds a fluffy white cat curled up on the couch, looking as comfortable as anything. 

Taehyun wonders if Yixing knows people usually ask their housemates first before getting pets. Or maybe Yixing just assumed Taehyun would be okay with it, just like Taehyun is okay with all the other things Yixing does that don’t quite fit the bill of an ‘ideal housemate’, the things that have become a regular part of his life now, the late nights and the loud music and the never ending questions that are both invasive but also kind of sweet. No one else really seems to care all that much about the way Taehyun makes his coffee or his favourite kind of kimchi or why he has so many tattoos, but Yixing never seems to run out of questions. 

In a weird way, the two of them fit together pretty well, as housemates, as a teacher and student. Kasper was right when he told Taehyun, way back before he introduced the two of them, that they were a lot alike. 

-

By the time Yixing gets back, Taehyun has gone to the gym, come up with a choreography for his next workshop, and ordered enough takeout for a family of four (though between him and Yixing, there probably won’t even be leftovers). They eat right out of the containers with disposable chopsticks—they’ve done this enough to know that neither of them will have the strength to deal with the dishes after hours of dancing later, so it’s better to just avoid it. 

‘So why did you get the cats? And when?’ Taehyun is still curious. Yixing looks at him, chopsticks poised to take another piece of food, and then turns to look at Luobo and the white one (Lulu, Yixing had called out affectionately when he stepped through the door earlier). 

‘I’ve wanted cats for a while but I could never figure out how to take care of them with the schedule I have… now that you’re here most of the time, I thought it’d be nice, and you could feed them when I have to travel, and they just looked so cute I couldn’t resist…’ Yixing trails off into a mumble, eyes lighting up when Lulu patters over to the table and nudges at his shins under the table. 

Taehyun bites back a comment about how he’s not here to be a catsitter, and that he travels with Yixing most of the time anyway. The cats are growing on him, he thinks, their footsteps and the sounds of them around the house made it less quiet when Yixing was at work.

He likes Lulu more—he didn’t chew on Taehyun’s shoes. 

And in a way, the cats feel like Yixing finally putting roots down, a home to come back to with the two of them and him. 

‘Do you like them?’ Yixing’s voice brings Taehyun’s focus back to the conversation. His eyes are bright. 

Taehyun nods, ‘They’re pretty cute.’

Yixing smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, and thank you mods for hosting tales of the lotus fest and being so understanding :") 
> 
> if you haven't seen the videos trix posted of lulu, please look them up... i'm so Fond.


End file.
